While providing medical care and treatment, doctors often screen, monitor, and diagnose certain physiological events of their patients. Accordingly, a wide variety of physiological screen, monitor, and diagnosis devices have been developed to improve patient care. The physiological medical devices provide healthcare personnel and patients with physiological information to more accurately screen, monitor, and diagnose medical conditions. As a result, physiological medical devices have become an indispensable part of modern medicine.
One example of a physiological medical devices used by doctors is a pulse oximeter. Pulse oximetry may be used to measure various blood characteristics, such as the arterial blood oxygen saturation of hemoglobin (SP02) or the rate of blood pulsations corresponding to each heartbeat of an individual. Continuously monitor a patient's physiological condition, such as pneumonia, can require monitoring a patient's heart rate, breathing rate, temperature, and oxygen levels. Continuously monitoring a patient's physiological condition usually requires hospitalization of the patient, which can be both costly and time consuming, especially where long term monitoring can be required. In addition to often requiring hospitalization, continuously monitor a patient can often require the patient be bed ridden or significantly reducing a patient's mobility, i.e. a non-ambulatory patient. Recently, wearable medical devices have begun to be developed and used to allow a patient to leave a medical facility while still being monitored. Accurate medical monitoring using wearable medical devices can be difficult as a patient's physiology and the environment that the patient is monitored in can change over time.
Reference will now be made to the exemplary embodiments illustrated, and specific language will be used herein to describe the same. It will nevertheless be understood that no limitation of the scope of the invention is thereby intended.